Operations

Remember when it was cool to make a 3D printed keychain? Well, those days are gone. 3D manufacturing has achieved a major shift in its lifecycle: it is now scalable.This means that companies large and small are going beyond simple prototyping and are now using 3D for complete production runs.

Manufacturing CEOs looking to expand their facilities or open factories in states other than the one they’re in now should track the progress of state right-to-work legislation and trends in union membership to discern their influence on politics and economics.

A pro-growth tax plan based on 5 factors, including a maximum corporate tax rate of 25%, would add almost 1 percentage point (about 0.9) to GDP growth on an annual basis, NAM says, and the initial-year impact would be slightly greater as a result of the territorial system transition tax.

Manufacturing continued to expand in January, growing for the 20th consecutive month, although growth was slower than December, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s Latest Report On Business.

If there is one good thing that came out of the Great Recession, it is that people began to wake up to the idea that manufacturing was important to U.S. survival, and more companies began bringing manufacturing jobs back to the states. The problem is, now we have to fill those jobs.

Many CEOs are in the midst of decisions right now about where to site or expand a factory. Here are 5 locations that are catching their attention as U.S. manufacturing hotbeds, either traditional-and-growing or up-and-coming.

➡ BEGIN BY FORGING AN INTERNAL CONSENSUS among key constituencies in your company about what you are trying to achieve. One key question is how much of your system can be offsite in the cloud versus on-premises. You don’t want to change technical specifications after you launch. That can lead to cost overruns and delays, known as ERP “bloat.” ➡ ...